1. “Spring” by Mary Oliver
As much a poem about the arrival of spring as it is about budding hope in the face of despair, Mary Oliver’s “Spring” captures the quiet beauty of holding on in spite of the cold. If you like snakes, vague religious references, sitting in nature and pondering, or are just beginning to come out of your own personal winter, then “Spring” might be the drop of warmth you need to make it through these final lingering frosts.
2. “Despite Everything, My Dancers” by Ocean Vuong
Set to the music of crickets at night, “Despite Everything, My Dancers” is a poem that sings of a new couple dancing in the midst of war as the world crumbles around them. The poem is fragile, teetering along the thin line between beauty and violence, pleasure and pain, love and abuse. The poem reminds you that it will end in tragedy, but still you’ll read on, hoping the shards of beauty will somehow, someway unbreak themselves.
3. “Flower Moon” from Perihelion: a History of Touch by Franny Choi
“Flower Moon” is afraid of spring’s softness and promise, it’s honesty and newness. This poem would rather revel in a half-blind, touch starved, disgust-fueled delerium than hold one delicate flower in its palm. If the new growth of spring makes your stomach turn with dread, then “Flower Moon” might be your song of the season.
4. “What to Eat, What to Drink, and What to Leave for Poison” by Camille T. Dungy
Maybe I’m cheating a little, including an entire sonnet crown as one entry in the list, but once you read What to Eat, What to Drink, and What to Leave for Poison you won’t blame me. For Camille Dungy, spring is a time to unfurl, explode, and blossom. Her sonnets are lush with greenery: daffodils, dogwoods, tulips, myrtle. She invites you to consume the brightness of the season, to welcome the peace of the garden, and to grow to love yourself. She writes an entire symphony into the season’s foliage. All she asks is that you pull up a chair and join her.
5. “Spring” by Edna St. Vincent Millay
There is a long, historical tradition of poets writing gorgeous odes to welcome in the beauty of spring. Let’s just say, Edna St. Vincent Millay has a different take on the season. What happens when the beauty of spring is not enough? When the chirps and cherry blossoms cannot wash away the cold of winter? Well, if you ask Edna St. Vincent Millay, the answer is April. April is what happens.
6. “Lines to a Nasturtium” by Anne Spencer
Much of Anne Spencer’s poetry cultivates the garden as a homeplace, so it was difficult to pick just one poem from her repertoire to welcome in the spring season. The world of Spencer’s poetry is a world in bloom. The nasturtiums in her garden are “Flame-flower, Day-torch, Mauna Loa.” But, in true Spencerian fashion, a flower is rarely just a flower. The Nasturtium, then, are also women in bloom: “furies / Beating, beating” within “fire-lit hearts” and between hands sweet as “brown lilies.” If you’re ready for your hot girl spring, or are just interested in fostering a deeper relationship to the Earth, then this is the poem for you!
7. “From the Desire Field” by Natalie Diaz
Troubling the relationship between anxiety and desire, Diaz churns her restlessness into want into the flowering fields of a garden tended by love and longing. In the soft growth of springtime, she argues that it is only when the body becomes the earth and the earth becomes the body that can we experience these shocks as sprouting.
8. “The Secret Garden” by Rita Dove
In “The Secret Garden,” winter is a sickbed and spring is a wooing. The seasons turn, not because of the angle of the Earth or the whims of Mother Nature, but instead because of the depth of love shared between our speaker and her partner. If you’re entering the spring season and a new relationship, this little poem about blossoming love in a blossoming garden will hit all the right notes.
